Posted
by
samzenpus
on Tuesday March 08, 2011 @02:04PM
from the getting-to-know-you-better dept.

Zothecula writes "Binghamton University computer scientist Lijun Yin thinks that using a computer should be a comfortable and intuitive experience, like talking to a friend. As anyone who has ever yelled 'Why did you go and do that?' at their PC or Mac will know, however, using a computer is currently sometimes more like talking to an overly-literal government bureaucrat who just doesn't get you. Thanks to Yin's work with things like emotion recognition, however, that might be on its way to becoming a thing of the past."

Not to mention it would be a task to program the computer to respond appropriately. My PC (or rather the software running on it) knowing that I'm pissed at it, won't help it fix the problems. What we really need is a reporting tool for the developers. i.e., "74% of users who reported this bug problem had a look of murderous rage on their face."

I'm not sure I want my tools to respond differently to me depending on what mood I'm in.

Actually, I just found out about f.lux yesterday and installed it on my work laptop this morning, then forgot about it during the day. Then along comes 6 pm and the laptop starts getting easier to read! It's not my mood, it's a different external reading (available sunlight, calculated by the current time, and it also might have some sort of IP-geolocation, to determine latitude), but I found on just the first day of using it that it is fairly cool. I'm now putting it on all my computers.

Sort of -- a segfault in legitimate software is not unheard of. Is that really the users fault?

Which brings up an interesting point (others -- care to weight in?): if/when you yell "at your computer," are you yelling at your computer, or a particular piece of software / hardware? I curse at things all the time -- shoddy wifi drivers / grub misbehaving (that's a fun one...) / databases / etc., but I'm very clear that I'm not yelling at my computer per se (or I may curse at a stuck key, lousy ethernet cabl

As an aspie, and someone who has partial face blindness and trouble recognizing facial expression of emotions, I'd find such research interesting as a learning tool. For instance, I can't tell the difference between fear and anger. Nor did I recognize the surprised face in the article. I just don't "see" it like other people do. If we can more precisely quantify the expression of emotion, it would certainly help me learn read and differentiate emotions when necessary.

Happiness, sadness, shock or surprise, and worry or concern or displeasure.

Interestingly, I don't have much trouble with Western smilies. Eastern smilies are a mystery. It could be because I look at people's mouths and not their eyes like most people, and Asians (and thus Eastern smilies) express emotion with the eyes.

I *like* that my computers are literal. I already find logic and algorithms "comfortable and intuitive". I have a much easier time talking to a computer in absolute terms than I do trying to decipher what's behind the casual lies most people pass off as conversation. For hackers, this is an evolutionary step in the wrong direction. For normal people? Maybe this is what Microsoft Bob was supposed to be.

sometimes more like talking to an overly-literal government bureaucrat who just doesn't get you.

Or like talking to a programmer who doesn't understand you don't care if the interface to an OS is cool or edgy, you just want to be able to get to things without having to click a dozen different links or burrow down some menu until you near the center of the Earth. *cough*Windows7*cough*

Or like talking to a web designer who doesn't understand that you don't care if the buttons fade in and out or they

I don't understand this complaint. I don't exactly spend hours and hours of time administering on my home computer, but everything I've ever needed to do was done with Windows-Key -> Type what I want -> Select from a very short list. Are you sure you're using the search features to their fullest? That is what Windows 7 is built off of at heart, as a general rule you shouldn't ever be browsing randomly through the administration tools to find what you're looking for.

An OS is not a search engine. It is supposed to provide you with the means to get at what you want without having to search.

Further, the new design prevents one from seeing everything at one time. I want to see every program installed on the system. Not one list for programs and one list for updates. Everything at one shot.

I shouldn't have to hunt around for how to turn off the fade-in effects by going to a menu system completely unrelated to display sett

What you want is impossible unless you are on a very minimal system. There are some legitimate gripes in there, like the Windows7 effects nonsense, but there's no way to present EVERYTHING on a system at once. The best you can do is to give someone a meaningful layout that makes navigation easy and the opportunity to rearrange it so the things they use often are a small step away, which usually means a desktop shortcut. I personally hate a cluttered desktop, but that just means I rarely use it; I see no

Except there is a huge flaw in Outlook which, if people continually open attachments rather than than save them, causes them not to be able to open any attachment. Those temp files never get deleted. That's a flaw which has not been corrected since day one.

Today I had to configure a new user on a W7 machine. It took me over half an hour to make it look and act as close as possible to XP. There is no way configuring a profile should take that long. Ten minutes tops.

I don't understand what my computer is supposed to DO once it has determined what my emotion is. The only everyday application I can see for this is marketing. I am sure marketers would like to register your reaction when you see something. I don't see how that helps ME. I mean, if the computer sees that I'm angry or surprised or whatever, what is it supposed to DO?

What would be infinitely more useful than a "auto-detect mood" feature would be a "you're wrong!"-button when you disagree with whatever result your PC came up with. Once that's developed, it might be useful to autotrigger it when the user is aggrevated.

I don't understand what my computer is supposed to DO once it has determined what my emotion is. The only everyday application I can see for this is marketing. I am sure marketers would like to register your reaction when you see something. I don't see how that helps ME. I mean, if the computer sees that I'm angry or surprised or whatever, what is it supposed to DO?

If I were a marketing researcher for an OS company, I would log whenever extreme reactions take place and use that to prioritize my bugs / feature improvements. You can't fix all the bugs, but you can fix the ones that cause the most people the most ire.

I can see it before me now.
Typing an email to the mother in law;
I'm so glad that you are coming to visit us..
Clippy: -No you aren't , starting auto correct
I'm so unbelievably depressed that you are.....
-Well, thanks Clippy.

Reminds me of a facial expression recognition project I worked on about five years back using plain old webcams and Neven Vision software. Under decent lighting conditions we were able to detect a variety of expressions.